Author Archives: Timothy Burke

Calling All Librarians, Info Scientists, Digital Humanists

I’m still struggling with how to begin a project that I would like to be a lifelong commitment for the rest of my career. The issues are technical and conceptual. What I want to do is begin publishing and archiving … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Swarthmore | 16 Comments

Hell Is Other Gamers (And Some Games)

Game developers talking about “culture” are often deeply frustrating. Either they are overly credulous about how design directly and symmetrically can create a particular set of cultural practices and outlook within a game, as my friend Thomas Malaby has observed … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities, Games and Gaming, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System | 1 Comment

A Sample Class Prep

I’m still thinking about ways to put some of my note-taking in my ordinary workflow into a disseminated or published form. More on that soon, as I’m seeking advice. But one other summer project has been to dig into my … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 1 Comment

What Has It Got In Its Pocketses?

Three movies for The Hobbit. Like a lot of other geeks, this makes me wary. (Non-geeks who know geeks are probably feeling despair instead, knowing they’re going to be dragged to all three.) Joking about the second film being a … Continue reading

Posted in Sheer Raw Geekery | 7 Comments

Hacker Job

Before I get to worrying about algebra, Andrew Hacker’s essay in the Sunday NYT made me worry about writing and research. As in, “This is poorly written” and “I don’t think he did much research”. If I were marking the … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Politics | 16 Comments

Don’t Bring Policy to a Culture Fight

E.J. Dionne suggests that gun control advocates have given up and are “rationalizing gutlessness”. I’ve moved in my own life from being intensely certain that comprehensive restrictions on gun ownership were an important political objective to being indifferent to the … Continue reading

Posted in Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics | 6 Comments

Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads

(Army of Darkness reference for the uninitiated.) I hereby volunteer: the next pundit who talks about how MOOCs are going to save higher education some big bucks needs to meet me for drinks at the establishment of his or her … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 15 Comments

Tales of the Burning World

One of the hardest things for academic historians to accept is that their characteristic engagement with the past is deeply, arguably inextricably, interwoven with the very particular ways that nations and modernity use history as a tool. E.g., both nations … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Production of History | 1 Comment

Showing the Money

So I sounded a note of confidence in my Chronicle of Higher Education piece that faculty are perfectly capable of constructive participation in hard fiscal choices and being responsible custodians of the liberal arts ideal within resource constraints. How sure … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 5 Comments

Etsy Education

Let me revive another point I’ve made before at this blog about online education of any kind, including blended learning and “flipped classrooms”. This thought may be a bit less comforting to folks at the University of Virginia, though it … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 5 Comments